Could heat-related power outages in NYC impact poll sites?

Potential power outages at polling stations caused by the current heat wave are threatening the New York City Board of Elections’ ability to count all first-round ballots on election night, and some first-choice results could be delayed by several days, BOE leadership said.

The BOE previously said the first round of ranked choice voting results in Tuesday’s elections would be available Tuesday night, with the preliminary ranked choice tabulation not available until July 1.

Power outages began to hit parts of eastern Queens Monday morning, leaving more than 3,000 people without power as of about 3 p.m. – though it’s not immediately clear if any polling sites in the area or in the city have lost power at this point. And with the heat index expected to exceed 100 degrees on primary day, polling places losing power is not out of the question. So, how will ballots be counted if power outages plague polling places?

According to Vincent Ignazio, deputy executive director of the city BOE, scanners have backup batteries that would last for some hours in the event of an outage. But if the power is not restored by the time those batteries die, Ignazio said, the process of counting remaining ballots is not unlike that of counting absentee and affidavit ballots. Those ballots (and any still being cast while the power remains out) would get put into “a separate bag in the scanner,” which Ignazio described as “similar to that of a drop box,” and then are scanned “in the borough at a later time.” He estimated that would be in “a few days tops.”




https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2025/06/could-heat-related-power-outages-nyc-impact-poll-sites/406253/?oref=csny-category-lander-top-story